Quick Facts
Biography
Sakari Orava (born 17 June 1945) is a Finnish sports medicine surgeon, physician, orthopedist, and professor.
He attended the medical school at the University of Oulu. Orava has clinics in Turku, Rome and Madrid. He has been dubbed as "Dr. House of sports", and has performed over 20,000 surgeries throughout his career. Orava was the head physician for the Finnish Olympic team in four consecutive Summer Olympics between 1988 and 2000.
High-profile operations
Orava's client list includes football clubs Real Madrid, Sevilla FC, FC Barcelona, Chelsea FC and Juventus FC. Orava has also been working with AC Milan since 1986, and he performed a successful surgery on footballer David Beckham at his clinic in Turku in March 2010 to repair his torn achilles tendon.
Orava has performed surgery on many other top athletes as well, including Haile Gebreselassie, Merlene Ottey, Andrea Barzagli, Didier Deschamps, Fábio Coentrão and Josep Guardiola. Spanish runner, Marta Domínguez, referred to Orava as ”como díos” – like a God.
Personal life
Orava lives in Naantali, Finland, and speaks Finnish, Swedish, English and German. He has a wife, Aira, and two children, Markus and Hanna-Maria. Orava was the 54 kg Finnish boxing champion in 1962. During his time off he enjoys painting.